Misfortune
by Ignabar
Summary: The Diclonii are a worldwide menace. In China, a secret offshoot of the main government division suffers a breakout. Fortunately, the tale is contained, quiet. Unfortunately, it is a story that ends at Jusenkyo Springs, and no story ends at Jusenkyo Springs without tragedy...
1. Prologue

**This story will be dark. The characters and tone are from completely different series, so to warn you: this story has the tone of Elfen Lied.**

**-Ignabar**

XXX

She couldn't see. At first, it had just been a blindfold. When they captured her, they gagged her and used a blindfold, an old rag stained with sweat, to cover her eyes and hide where they were going from her. They didn't bother to knock her unconscious, so the memories of her travel to this foreign place were hazy but existent. She'd gone by plane, she thought. A long, noise ride in the cargo hold of a plane with guards pointing guns at her the whole way. The box she sat on was uncomfortable, and dug an edge into her ribs. The gag didn't let her complain.

Later, she'd been given a full-on helmet. She had only seen it once, and it was a well-crafted piece. Solid titanium, a man in a white coat had proclaimed. It was chrome and shiny, with copper tints running along its length near the top. She supposed it was tungsten, although it could have been an alloy or simply decorative. Then it was strapped around her head, and light vanished. There were speakers on the inside of the helmet, however, and two people talked to her regularly. Usually impolitely.

She lived in a goddamn cell, without clothes or entertainment, and only a bed and a toilet as furniture. It was less than a bed and more of a medical table, seeing as it had leather straps on the metal frame, and once or twice a week she would wake up immobile, being prodded and poked and opened up and stitched shut by a team of curious men. At first, she swore and struggled, thrashing against the bonds, but the scientists just dosed her with something to quiet her down. She tried to stay awake, but two days in they flooded her helmet with strange-smelling gas, and the next thing she knew she was back on the table.

About a month after she had been taken from her mother and father, a man spoke to her. He had excellent Japanese, but a Chinese accent, and after introducing himself as the 'Branch Director,' had demanded to know why she didn't or wouldn't or couldn't use her vectors. She responded that she had no idea what the heck vectors were, and why was she in a goddamn cell in the first place? The man had repeated his question, and she, rather more forcefully, insisted she had no idea what he was talking about. Then she said, "Is this about my horns?"

The man had been silent for a moment, then said "Partially," and turned her speakers off. The rest of the day was spent on a treadmill with wires connected to her. Some were attached to her chest, near her heart, but whenever she slowed down the ones on her arms and legs gave her a stiff jolt of electricity. She was sure they could hear her crying, someone watching her and writing on a clipboard, but the torture went on for two hours before they fed her again.

Her mother was probably worried about her, she hoped, and maybe her older sister or father might figure out what had happened and find her to take her home, but as three months passed, hope started to fade. The doctors were getting more excited about her, and they upgraded her bed to a full-on medical table. One morning, she woke up completely wrapped in thin fabric, paralyzed from the neck down. They installed a shunt on her wrist, a ring of plastic to stop the skin from healing over a vein, and from then on it cost her a pint of blood to eat dinner.

Their experiments were getting more invasive, too. Her captors had yet to actually dissect her, but they weren't shy about inserting needles, taking samples, testing what she did under pressure, comparing her to 'the others,' and their 'vector evolution grades relative to cranial extrusion and pineal gland maturity.' After the voice of the lead doctor informed her over the speaker that she had exhausted her potential as a specialized research vessel, the experiments became more and more barbaric. Almost four months into her kidnapping the doctors had performed a colonoscopy on her. It was the single most embarrassing thing that had happened to her at that horrible place, and when it was over and the naked girl was hot and embarrassed all over.

Then one day, she awoke having reverted to her old blindfold. She was on the table again and for the first time in months she heard a human voice other than that of the Branch Director or lead scientist. In a voice creaky with misuse she asked what they were doing, and on of the men cheerfully replied that they were inserting wires _into her brain_ to test whether she could be controlled remotely.

The next four hours were astonishingly horrible, and by the time she had contorted every muscle in her body and felt tingly all across her skin and every last emotion had been twisted in unnatural ways, she was crying and begging to die.

They gave her a larger dinner that night. She didn't eat it.

Six months had dragged by. Her body was fitter than it had ever been before, and she was relatively well fed, and she had polite conversations about whatnot with the Branch Director every once in a while, but she wanted it to stop more fervently than ever. She had abandoned hope on dying, as she doubted the scientists were quite ready to let their little lab rat go without a struggle, but escape remained within her mind's reach. At night she dreamed about seeing her mother again, her daddy hugging her, and the scientists and the damn Branch Director being taken away by men in dark clothes, just like she was. Then she woke up and feared that they could see into her dreams, and pushed the thoughts into her daydreams, another distraction during the constant tests and abuse.

Hope was dying slowly, like a candle running close to the ground. Every day the scientists came up with new, more unusual tests, sometimes cutting her open and examining her organs, other times injecting her with drugs to make her awake, asleep, hyperactive, excited, sad, angry, a whole gamut of reactions and emotions. Mostly angry, she had to admit, and the effect was simply that she felt her resentment fester more by the day as the men tried to awaken her potential, whatever that was.

The speaker clicked on one day or night, the exact time was a bit foggy to her. "Hello," the Branch Director said kindly. "How are you today?"

"What do you want?" she asked impatiently.

"You are our most well-behaved guest," he said, "and we want to reward you for it. Is there anything you would like?"

"There are more people here?" she asked incredulously, and the man laughed.

"Of course there are," said the Branch Director. "We have to make sure we understand all of you, to keep everyone safe."

"What do you mean?" she asked, and the Director yawned impatiently. "Is that what you really want? To know what this is, the why and wherefore?"

"I want you to let me go!" she demanded.

"We can't do that, I'm afraid. It's far too risky. I do have an idea, however…"

"What."

"Do you want to see your sister? She's right in the room next to yours, I bel-"

"YOU BASTARD!" she shrieked. "WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?" It was the first time she swore out loud in her whole life. Somehow, she had imagined it would be a little more glamorous than the dark quiet she was trapped in right now.

"Do you want to or not?" said the man, and the girl reined her temper in for a full minute before answering in the positive.

A day later, the door to her cell clicked open and a man strode in. He did something she couldn't see for a minute, then the front shield of her helmet went from obsidian-black to crystal-clear. He had a handsome face, short black hair and a winning smile. He stood by the control panel on her wall, a key inserted in the bottom of the interface and a few prominent levers pulled down. She idly noted that there was blood covering her bed-cum-private operating table, near where her nether regions rested.

"Come with me," he instructed. "Your sister is not far from here. Although you are not restrained, bear in mind that there are armed personnel at key points throughout the facility. Should you act in a manner we deem to be threatening, you will be sanctioned. Is this understood?"

She nodded, and he led her down hallways. It was a big place, she noted, all sterile white walls and even lighting. Most of the nearby rooms were operating theatres and offices, but at last they reached a solid steel door marked #0294 in red lettering and the white coat stopped. "You have fifteen minutes," he advised, swiping a plastic card through a device, and the door opened vertically. He faced away from the door, whistling nervously, and she stepped tentatively inside.

There were two men inside, dressed in full body armor and carrying massive guns that the two of them trained on something between them. That something was a pair of metal rings, a few meters apart and one atop the other, bolted to the ceiling. In the centre, also suspended form the ceiling by a vertical metal sheet covered in leather restraints, was a naked girl, about seventeen. As she watched, horrified, the teen's metal mask was slowly lifted from her head by a mechanical contraption on the ceiling, revealing the haggard and gaunt face of her older sister.

"Sis!" she screamed, and one of the guards leveled his weapon at her. She swallowed hard, and her sister offered a grim smile. "Hey there trooper," she said in a scratchy voice. "How are you holding out?"

"N-not good," she admitted, and the guard pointed his weapon at her sister again.

_Would you like to escape?'_ asked a voice in her head, and she jumped in fright.

_'No, don't!'_ the voice insisted, _'don't let them know!'_ She nodded imperceptibly, and the voice _hmm_'ed.

_'I have an idea,'_ it said slowly, and she hung on to its every word. _'Talk to your sister about something normal, something you wanted to ask her, but as you do so, walk towards one of the guards.'_

"Why are we here?" she asked, shuffling a bit, and her sister fidgeted with an answer. "I think its because we have powers," she said heavily. "Powers that scare regular people, and these scientists want to understand them."

"I don't have any powers," she complained, inching closer to the guard on the left, the one that had pointed his gun at her. Her sister shrugged awkwardly in her restraints. "Maybe you're special?" she suggested. "You have the horns, though."

"Yeah. The guy said it was because of our horns that we were here."

"There are loads of us in this very building," her sister said seriously. "Diclonii, I think, is what we are. Mutants, or aliens. We are the 'next step' for humans."

_'NOW!'_ the voice screamed, and she dropped to her butt and slammed her feet into the guard's shins. He shifted slightly to the right, and several things happened in less than a second. First, he bumped up against the cage containing her sister and was suddenly hoisted off of his feet and into the air. Her sister's red eyes glowered with malice the keychain floated off of his neck and into the cage. Having forgotten the younger sibling, the other guard tried to fire, but his companion's body was swung all the way around the metal rings to absorb the hail of bullets. As he fired, the meat shield was catapulted into him at mach-speed forces, and both men slumped against the wall with a sharp _crack_.

She fell back, stunned, and watched numbly as the key inserted and twisted itself in the lock, and her sister jumped free. She cracked her arms quickly and gestured to her to come to her. As she did, she felt an invisible force slam against the back of her head.

"Damn wolfram," her sister muttered. "At least it'll be offline now."

"S-sis, w-what's go-going on?" she asked in a stutter, but her sister grabbed her. "Do you want to escape or not?" she asked, and she nodded faintly.

"Well then LET'S GO!"

The next half hour passed in a blur. The two naked sisters ran at the door and it burst open in a storm of fragments that instantly killed the man who had escorted her there. The titanium shards mysteriously avoided them, and they kept running. A klaxon, similar to a British air-raid siren went off, and scores of men raced down the hallways after them. They all died. She stopped paying attention after the first, because they were all the same: their heads were ripped off and cast away. Then the next one died in a similar fashion, and his successor as well, until is melded together into a grotesque orgy of horror. Blood spattered them, but the older dragged the younger along like she was a featherweight.

They came to a dead end. There was a massive door barring the way, twenty by twenty meters with a gigantic X painted on in the standard red of the facility. She slammed against the door hard, her sister backing her up as a platoon of guards backed them into a corner. A man in a suit stepped forward, and she knew instantly that he was the infamous Branch Director.

"Stand down, number two nintey-four," he said coldly. "We will kill your sister if you do not comply."

"Fuck you," the teen snarled. "Like hell I'm letting you keep her!"

"Fire," he said, and a hail of bullets smashed futilely into a shimmering shield. She watched, passive, as scores of men ran forwards, guns blazing, only to be mowed down by her sister's invisible force.

"Get the door! Use your vectors!" she shouted over the din, and the younger turned away from the carnage. She closed her eyes, welcoming the familiar darkness, and around her she felt… _something_…

The door exploded outwards. She stepped out into the cool night air, feeling the wind and snow on her bare skin, and she shivered in cold and delight. "We're free!" she shouted ecstatically, but there was no reply. She turned around, confused, and was shocked to see her sister holding her shoulder. Blood was seeping down her body in an endless trickle.

"GO! **NOW!**"

She ran. She felt angry, and shocked, and horrified, but mostly ashamed as she ran down the snow-slicked tarmac. She was going numb as she neared the forest's edge with _still_ nobody following her, and absolutely nothing could faze her as she crashed into the overgrowth. Not the thorns tearing at her shoulders, or the branches whipping her breasts and back, but especially not her sister's fate at the hands of the awful men who declared themselves saviors even as they tore innocents apart.

She ran for hours. The moon was high overhead, but darkness pervaded her sight and made the trail vague. It was only when she nearly ran over the edge of a sheer cliff that she realized that the facility was in a mountain range. She turned back, disappointed, and renewed her search for a police koban. As time wore on, exhaustion and hypothermia set in. She rubbed herself to warm up but goosebumps and violent shivering were the hallmarks of death that stalked her up and down the paths.

She almost died of _relief_ when four people, shouting and directing each other to action even as she fainted-

XXX

It was warm. She rather like that, she decided. She opened her eyes, wriggling her naked body underneath the heavy woolen blanket that covered it, and giggled. "I made it," she whispered, and somebody _hhhmphed_ behind her.

"You almost _didn't,_" a female voice said irritably. "What were you doing out in the Bayankala mountains in this season? Dressed in that oh-so fashionable helmet and _nothing else_?"

"I was kidnapped," she said sluggishly, rising from the rocky floor and shedding the blanket. Shame, she was enjoying it. "My sister and I, they had us at this building off in the mountains. They- they _tested_ us…"

"Ohhh, I'm so, so sorry," the voice said sincerely, and a pair of warm arms encircled her. What had happened to her sister was inferred. "Can I help you? Anything?"

She turned around, and almost fell over when she saw that the woman holding her had goddamn _wings_ sprouting form her back. She was wearing a thick woolen coat and a pair of skiing goggles, which were pushed up over her face. "Eh, heh," she chuckled weakly, and the helmeted diclonii waved her hands quickly.

"No, no! It's fine, don't worry about it, miss…?"

"Kiima," the bird-woman said. "I think we- _shit!_" She ducked out of the tent they were in and left, leaving her alone with her thoughts. There weren't much of those, to be honest. Mostly she was barely aware of time passing and nothing else, so an indeterminately amount of time later had Kiima return to the tent wearing a scowl.

"We have to go. _Lord_ Saffron demands it." She said his title sarcastically. "I am to leave you in the care of Plum. She's neutral in these mountains, and her father in an expert in xenobiology, so perhaps they can help you. Here," she offered a bundle of supplies to the girl who took them unquestioningly. "These are some rations and clothes, and a map to Jusenkyo springs. Go fast!" Kiima kissed the mutant on the helmet over her forehead and left. The two never met again.

She looked at the leather knapsack in her hands, a little surprised by the sudden exit of the kind Kiima, and dug through it. There were a few granola bars, a shirt, and a pair of boxer shorts. She unwrapped a granola bar eagerly...

... and screamed in frustration when she realized that her helmet was still affixed tight to her head.

_'It's not fair!' _she whined to herself, and a part of herself replied, _'Oh yeah? What are you going to do about it?'_ Nothing, it seemed. She stood up, depression weighing on her heart, and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. Almost as soon as she stepped into the mountainous winter, she lost sight of the tent, the food, and the warmth. Cursing Saffron to a fate worse than death, she pulled her only warmth around herself tighter and set off into a blizzard.

XXX

She was dying, she could feel it. Her poor, abused body couldn't take the extreme temperature anymore, and instead appealed to her mutant brain to stop the pain. As such, the biting cold was no longer agony, merely terrifying. Blood dripped at a glacial pace from her shunt, and that too took its toll. It was almost colder in her head than on the frosted grass beneath her feet, freezing thoughts in their tracks before they could torment her.

Through the thick curtain of snow, a shadowy figure in a a parka materialized out of nowhere. She panicked, spinning on one nerveless foot and running blindly away from the danger. She made about out of four meters and fell.

Into Jusenkyo Springs. The below-zero water, magically maintained at the coldest possible temperature, inflicted a lethal hypothermia that killed the diclonius girl before drowning did. In seconds, it was all over.

XXX

The next day, when the weather abated, the young Plum donned her winter coat once again to search for the strange girl she had seen last night. She skipped out the door, said goodbye to her father, and dismissed thoughts of making snow angels before racing down the narrow strips of land between cursed pools. As with every winter, the springs remained unfrozen.

It didn't take long to find her, as she was still lying in one of the blank springs. Dead as a doornail, blood leaking from her wrist into the water, wearing a helmet made of solid metal that hid her face. Plum shook her head sadly, but otherwise remained aloof. When you lived at Jusenkyo, tragedy became second nature. The young girl went to retrieve a pond skimmer for the body, and was already planning the official entry into her father's logbook.

_This tragic story of strange girl who drown here..._


	2. Act I, Scene I

It was storming heavily in Tokyo that day, thick black cumulonimbus rolling over the city and dropping heavy sheets of water hard enough to pulverize soil and destroy the landscape. Lightning cracked the sky every few seconds, gigantic forks and sheets that lit the ground in eerie yellow before vanishing in a colossal _boom_. Almost everyone was inside, as it was the middle of the day and most of the population was at work. Students, children, and anyone else with time to spare had decided long ago to spend it indoors, doing something dry. As far as the eye could see it was a ghost town the now inhabited, desolate streets stretching up and down Nerima.

There was one caveat, and a strange one at that. Still, you'd have to be strange to want to be outside on such a horrid, cold day. In fact, only one of them did. She was a girl, short and busty, but with long red hair and a powerful frame that hid an incredible amount of whoopass for its size. She wore a pair of black pants and a red cheongsam, and a wide blue headband covered her forehead and held her dripping hair out of her face. The girl was currently slung over the shoulder of a massive black and white beast. The panda was as wet as the human it was carrying fireman-style, but it was as happy as a panda could be. In addition to a girl, it was also carrying two green bags, one noticeably larger than the other, and the smaller containing mostly rocks. The whole scene was unusual, to say the least, but it got stranger.

"Damn it pops, let me go!" the girl roared. "I have to get back to China to cure this damn curse!" She began slamming her fists into the back of the panda's head, but the bear just shrugged the blows off. It closed one clawed paw into an approximation of a fist and smashed it into the girl's butt, and she immediately stopped to cover her backside. The panda used its free hand to rummage around in its pack for something, which came in the form of a wooden sign nailed to a stick. 'Ungrateful boy,' the sign proclaimed. 'You should be thankful that we shall soon be out of this accursed rain!'

"Yeah?" shot the girl. "If I had my way it wouldn't _be_ accursed, now would it?"

The panda hit the girl with the sign; this time on the head, because her butt was protected. 'Don't whine so much, son,' the opposite side of the sign read. If anyone was there, they might have commented that the panda had a gender-differentiation problem, but sadly it made sense to everyone present. 'I have complete faith that we can fix your-' _flip_ '-problem _after _we deal with our business here in Nerima.' If anyone was there, they might have commented that signs didn't have four sides, but that too made an unfortunate amount of sense to at least one of the travelers.

They came to a stop on the front porch of a blue wooden house that was standing up to the storm surprisingly well in its advanced age. The panda shifted its grip on its cargo and knocked on the door. "What the heck do ya think is gonna happen, ya moron? Yer a panda knockin' on a door, yer friend ain't gonna recognize ya!" The panda shrugged, jostling her, and grunted plaintively.

The door opened, behind it being a willowy girl with short brown hair and an inquisitive gaze. She took one look at the back end of the girl on the panda's shoulder, then at the panda itself, and slammed the door shut, screaming all the way in. There was silence for a few seconds, then the girl snickered. "I told ya so, dumbass," she said, and the panda grit its teeth and reminded itself to be on its best behavior, lest they get thrown into the rain. Again.

The door opened again, this time markedly more slowly, and behind it was a younger girl with longer hair, clearly one of the first girl's sisters. She narrowed her eyes at the soggy pair sitting on her porch and turned her head slightly. "Daddy?" she hollered, "Do your friends happen to be a panda and a girl my age? 'Cause if not, I don't think we're getting engaged today."

"Engaged?" she asked, maneuvering her head so as to talk over the panda's shoulder. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, hello!" Akane said brightly. "I'm sorry, I didn't know you were awake back there, I would have invited you in…"

"No, it's fine," Ranma replied, as though they weren't talking in the most awkward of circumstances. "Although, maybe we could come in before we talk? It's kinda cold out here."

"I apologize, please do come in and dry off," Akane invited them politely. "I'll go get you some towels, and Kasumi can take care of your… panda? Why do you have a panda, anyways?"

"Dunno," Ranma shot back, "who are you getting engaged to today?"

"Touché." Akane smiled warmly. The panda rolled his eyes and waved sideways with one paw, and Akane favoured it with a frown. "Fine. Get inside and dry off." She stepped aside, and the panda walked in with Ranma over his shoulder. Genma shook himself dry like a wet dog, Ranma moving so fast she vanished into a blur, and set the girl down. Ranma got up and tried to walk after Akane, but was so dizzy she only made it a few meters before falling against a wall, panting heavily.

"You… coulda…put me… down, first…" she grunted, and Genma cuffed her on the back of the head hard enough to bring her to her knees. Soun walked into the foyer, accompanied by Akane and the first girl, who was hiding behind him and pointing hysterically. "See? See? I told you there was a panda in the house!"

"Settle down, Nabiki," Soun said firmly. "Tell me, son, what's your name?"

"Ranma Saotome. Sorry 'bout this…"

"It's fine!" Akane said. "Really! We were just expecting a boy, that's all. Jeez, daddy, you'd think you'd be able to tell what gender a guy, especially if you want them to marry your daughter."

Ranma had gone an interesting shade of pale and started coughing weakly, while the panda sat down in the corner and began rifling through the travel packs. Nabiki approached Ranma cautiously and poked her in the chest. When it proved unexpectedly… springy… Nabiki gave her father a dark look. "Really? She's cute, I guess, but I don't swing that way, daddy."

Soun froze. He reached out tentatively and poked Ranma on the other half of her chest a couple times. "Would you stop that?" Ranma demanded, swiping their hands away, and the older man fainted dead away. Genma finally found what he was looking for in his pack, a stick of bamboo, and began chewing thoughtfully. Akane looked at the train wreck of her front hall in something like disbelief. "That's it, we're getting out of here," she said suddenly, grabbing Ranma's hand and tugging. The redhead didn't protest as Akane pulled her through the house, past the stairs and kitchen and out the back door to the dojo.

XXX

Soun awoke to find his middle daughter and a panda looking down on him, one with concern, and the other with what passed as concern on a panda. He sat up slowly, rubbing his forehead and groaning. "What a strange dream I've had," he mumbled, either not noticing or caring about the panda in his front hall. "I thought Saotome and his son Ranma had come, only Ranma was a girl! And Nabiki told me she was a lesbian, and there was a panda…" Now it was getting to him.

"I am _not_ gay, daddy," Nabiki said. "But yes, Ranma is a girl, and yes, there is a panda." The panda waved and took another bite out of the bamboo stick.

"B-but what?" Soun asked, stupefied. "I thought Genma was coming today."

The panda stood up and walked to the kitchen, leaving Nabiki to wonder what the heck was going on. Soun's concerns weren't that encompassing. There was a muted clatter, a frightful "Oh, my!" and a _thud_, and the panda returned from the kitchen with a kettle of boiling water. It sat down on the floor before the two and upended the water on itself. There was a small flash of whiteness that radiated from its form, and suddenly in the panda's place was a bald man with old horn-rimmed glasses and a ratty gi. "It's good to see you again, Soun," he said.

"Genma?" Soun whispered, tears beginning to stream down his face. Genma nodded, and the two embraced. "Welcome back to Nerima, old friend," Soun congratulated. "I was beginning to wonder if you would ever show up!"

"Nonsense!" Genma thundered. "I would never back out of our agreement!"

"Indeed, Saotome, indeed. Come, tell me of your travels, your son, and how you came to…"

"Become a panda? I tell you, Soun, it is a long and thrilling tale! Perhaps we ought to speak over a good game of shogi?"

"Just the ticket!" Soun laughed. "I'll go get my old board, perhaps you could go ask Kasumi in the kitchen if she might fix us up some refreshments?"

It was almost scary to Nabiki how well they anticipated each other. Like they actually _were_ old friends, instead of a con artist and a dupe like she suspected. But that was ridiculous, because she'd never even heard of Genma Saotome before today, much less met the man. So how could he and her father be friends? It bothered her that something like that might have escaped her.

The other thing that niggled at her was Ranma. Sure she was a girl, but something about how Genma Saotome had just fragrantly violated the laws of physics without being struck down by the gods suggested that the two men might be mad enough to try and push through a marriage anyways. Madness! And yet, there was something about Ranma that was just masculine enough to rouse Nabiki's curiosity. Perhaps this story was more convoluted than she suspected.

XXX

Ranma fell in love with the dojo as soon as she saw it. Well constructed, maybe fifty years old, giving it the lovable qualities of an old sparring hall and the durability of modern construction. She had spent nearly all her life going from dojo to dojo, up until the recent trip to China, so to Ranma they were like home.

"It's great!" she exclaimed, and Akane nodded as she walked over to where she had been breaking bricks earlier. "Our dad helped make it with our grandfather," she said proudly. "We haven't had many classes in here, 'cause ever since mom died daddy stopped trying to teach, but we get along just fine anyways."

"You seem to use it a lot," Ranma pointed out. "You do karate?"

"Yup! Tendo Anything-Goes, martial arts, our family branch. What about you, do you practice as well?"

"A little."

"Wanna have a sparring match?" Akane asked. Ranma looked at her, surprised. "Uh… okay?"

"Don't worry, I won't hit you _too_ hard," Akane said, and Ranma rolled her eyes when she wasn't looking. "Alright," she agreed, and the two faced off.

"Hiyah!" Akane shouted, stepping into a punch for Ranma's forehead. To her surprise, Ranma simply leaned back a fraction and the punch went clean over her head. With almost contemptuous ease, Ranma stepped around her and set herself in a high stance, one foot slightly in front of the other. Akane looked down at her opponent's feet. "That's not a very good stance," she commented. "Maybe you should-"

Ranma tapped her on the top of her head with a fingertip. "Pay attention?" she suggested mirthfully. Akane scowled lightheartedly and kicked at the hand, which Ranma withdrew sharply. "Take me seriously!" she shouted, and unleashed a barrage of kicks and punches aimed at limiting Ranma's mobility and taking out his elbows and knees. To her utter surprise and shock, Ranma simply flinched away from every blow with no effort, like floating on the breeze, and when she aimed a kick for his midsection, the redhead jumped straight up nearly two meters and perched on her raised shin.

It was a testament to her strength of will and muscle that Akane's leg didn't so much as twitch with the additional weight. She noted that Ranma was fairly light for her size. Her opponent cocked her head back and somersaulted through the air over her head, landing in a another high back stance and touching the back of her head with her finger.

"Not bad," Ranma commented, "but your stances are a little bit low for your age. When was the last time you actually went to classes?"

Instead of dignifying that with a response, Akane spun around and viciously punched for Ranma's smartass mouth. Caught marginally off guard, Ranma bent at the waist to avoid the attack, but in doing so she opened the rest of her face. The fist slid over her nose, almost in slow motion, and pushed the blue headband off of her forehead. It fluttered to the ground, slowly catching the light of the setting sun beyond the cloud, but neither Akane nor Ranma paid it any mind.

Because Ranma was staring at Akane, and Akane was staring at Ranma's head. Specifically, the pair of bone-white horns protruding from the side of her head. They stuck out a few centimeters from her skull, almost but not quite obscured by her flowing red hair. Akane painstakingly dragged her gaze away form the horns to Ranma's watering eyes… which had blood red irises, ringed by dark orange. She stumbled back, heedless of the hurt look in Ranma's eyes, and ran screaming from the dojo.

Letting a strangled sob escape, Ranma sank to her knees and buried her face in her hands, tears leaking from her closed eyes and onto the floor.

XXX

"So you two knuckleheads went to a cursed training ground? What did you think was going to happen?"

Genma shrugged meaninglessly and pulled out a brochure for Jusenkyo springs from his pack. Nabiki flipped it open and scanned it with a critical eye before dropping it on the table and barking a laugh. "You don't read Mandarin, do you?" she chuckled, and Genma shrugged again. "I did it for the sake of our training," he said pompously, and Soun shook his head before coming to a realization.

"Look," Kasumi pointed out, picking up the brochure and turning it over, "it's written in Japanese on the b-"

"GENMA! YOU HAVE A SON, RIGHT? RANMA HAS SIMPLY FALLEN IN THE SPRING OF DROWNED GIRL!"

"That's almost right," Genma said tactfully, and Soun broke down in grateful tears. "That's so wonderful!" he cried, overriding his daughters' protests. "You shall be married before the sun rises and the clouds break!"

"Soun, old buddy, there's really something you should know about Ranma…"

"Mmm?" Nabiki asked predatorily, but before Genma could answer, Akane ran into the house.

"MY GOD, SHE'S A MONSTER!" she screamed, almost falling off her feet at the speed she braked at. "SHE-SHE HAS HORNS! AND RED EYES! DADDY, WE HAVE TO GET RID OF HER BEFORE S-MMMHGHGMPH!"

Soun had stood up and slapped his hand over Akane's mouth. "Is this true?" he asked Genma suspiciously.

"Er… yes. The spring that Ranma fell in was created less than two years ago, and so far it appears to simply be a Spring of Drowned Girl, but with horns. There doesn't seem to be anything else wrong with that body… except that it's female, of course."

Soun relaxed. "Brilliant!" he responded, dropping the gibbering Akane and turning to his other daughters. "If there's nothing else objectionable about the boy, we shall bring him in and decide who will be wed. Do any of you want to fulfill our agreement, or should we let Ranma decide?"

Kasumi it her father with a frying pan. Soun didn't register the hit at all, sitting as serenely as he had before.

"Whoa, whoa, back up a bit," Nabiki said. "Why does Ranma's girl form have horns? Does she turn into a demon, or is it just a birth defect? I think there are surgeries that fix that sort of thing."

_ 'Why am I just accepting this as true?'_

Genma clapped his hands excitedly. "Doctors can fix it? That's splendid; we'll do that as soon as Ranma's married! Then he'll have half of his problems dealt with right away, and a beautiful wife to boot!" Kasumi blushed, Nabiki planted her face in her palm, and Akane started screaming apoplectic gibberish again.

"I will go and retrieve Ranma," Soun declared, and did so. An awkward silence settled around the table as Akane calmed down to rational capacity again and Kasumi resumed making miso soup for dinner. Akane was still a bit unsure as to how she felt about the unusual girl-_boy_ (**boy**, she reminded herself) that had washed up on their porch that evening. So she was actually a he, who wasn't actually a monster, and that was good. But that meant she had been beaten by a boy! Deciding that cognitive dissonance was too much work she pushed the issue from her mind.

XXX

Soun sprinted off his back deck, across the lawn in the freezing rain, and into the dojo. The door was left open and the lights were off, which was hardly an encouraging sign. He stepped cautiously into his training hall and flipped the lights on, revealing Ranma sitting in a corner. Her head was down, her knees were up, and she'd obviously been crying.

"What do _you_ want," she snapped, looking up, and Soun swallowed. "Ranma," he began, "I'm very sorry for what happened between you and my daughter. She was just startled by your, um, _additions_, and I'm sure she'll accept you for who you are when we explain it to her."

"How do you figure?" Ranma asked tiredly. "I'm a freak and she knows it. Not only am I a girl half the time, I have horns! How weird is that?" She laughed in self-deprecation. "What's there to forgive? She was right the first time."

"Son," Soun rebuked, "I thought your father trained you to be better than that. You are a martial artist, you can't allow every little curse to get you down! Just come inside with me, you and Akane can make nice, and then we'll figure out a solution for your problems together." The Tendo patriarch tactfully left out the details of the pact.

"You… you… WAAAAAH!" Ranma sobbed again, although Soun was unsure if it was because he'd hurt her or in gratitude. He gently picked the sobbing girl up and carried her back into the house.

XXX

"Ranma," Akane said stoically, "I owe you an apology. I should have been calmer when I first found out, and I promise that none of us will ever do it again. Can we be friends again?"

Ranma smiled reservedly and shook her hand. "Thank you," she said quietly.

Soun and Genma shared a knowing smile behind their backs. Thanks to Ranma's problem, they were already on their way to forming an unbreakable bond. On that would hopefully lead to marriage and a cure. Yeah, if you were a blind optimist. Unfortunately, there were only two of those in the room.


	3. Act I, Scene II

Soun, Akane, and Ranma walked for a few minutes in the rain through a tasteful suburb of Nerima until they came to a small plaza. It was still raining as hard as ever, and projected to last until the end of the week and then some, so Ranma had given out any hope of sunshine and masculinity for the foreseeable future. Soun didn't own a car, so the three of them trudged miserably down the street to their destination, Ranma restored to her headband once again.

"This is it!" Soun said jovially, ignoring the driving rain that plastered his thin hair to his head and was now leaking down his shirt. He pointed at a part of a wall of stores that was unremarkable in the obscuring dust-coloured rain, but which Akane seemed to recognize. Ranma squinted at the maroon signboard hanging over the entrance, which read 'CHIROPRACTOR & CLINIC' in massive kanji. She turned to look at Akane, who gestured encouraging at the door, and together the three went inside.

There was soft muzak playing, a tune that Ranma couldn't place, and the wall décor was just as unremarkable as the outside. The only things in the waiting room were a few ugly green chairs and a brown sofa, as well as a desk near the back. There was nobody there. Soun walked up to the desk and hit the bell. It echoed unanswered in the quiet, reinforcing Ranma's opinion that they were wasting their time.

Then Akane snickered, Ranma turned to ask her what was so funny, and abruptly leapt two feet in the air as he was met by a walking skeleton, one hand perched on her shoulder and head cocked inquisitively. She stumbled back in alarm, and Akane reached out belatedly to catch her. Ranma fell flat on her butt, and someone roared with laughter. "Ah hah hah! Hee hee hee, ha! I never get tired of doing that!"

"I think perhaps you need to reassess your priorities in life," Soun muttered, turning away from the counter. Ranma stood up slowly, shaking slightly, and watched with a disgusted fascination as a man in his late twenties got his raucous laughter under control. He adjusted his glasses and waved the plastic hand of the fake skeleton he was holding under Ranma's nose, eliciting a growl.

"Hello, Dr. Tofu," Akane said dreamily. "How are you today?"

"I'm just fine, Akane. Sorry about this, by the way. Meet Betty, my, ah, companion in this practice. My name is Tofu Ono. Are you Ranma?"

Ranma stuck her hand out and shook his. "Hello, and yes, I'm Ranma. I take it you're a martial artist?"

Dr. Tofu squinted at him. "How did you know that?" he asked.

"You snuck up on me without letting me notice. That's pretty good in my books."

He smiled at the two of them, and Akane swooned privately. "Well, I was told a few things about you by your parents, Ranma. Come inside, we can give you a general checkup for those years on the road, then address your more recent problems."

Soun sat patiently on a chair in the lobby, clearly waiting for Ranma to go with Dr. Tofu for his appointment, but when Akane attempted to follow them behind them he grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her into the chair next to him. Ignoring his fiancé's protests, Ranma walked behind Tofu to a stereotypical examination room.

"Alright, now the first thing we need to get out of the way is your 'curse' that you got in China. I was informed by K-k-…Ka… Tendo… that it is triggered by water and temperature, so I prepared this for you." He held up a largish teapot, steam emitting from its spout, and a steel canister of equally cold water. "I understand that you are actually male?"

Ranma shrugged and poured a small stream of hot water on his head. Immediately, he shot up nearly ten centimeters in height, his hair faded from vibrant red to a black more typical of his nationality, and his eyes changed to their normal piercing blue. Dr. Tofu watched, fascinated, as the boy-turned-girl-turned-boy straightened his shirt, pulled off his headband, and withdrew a ratty piece of string to tie his massive mop of hair into a crude ponytail. "That prove it to ya, doc?" he asked in a deep baritone, startling the doctor out of his wonderment.

"Ah… sorry, I was merely thinking about it. Jusenkyo is a real place after all, and magic exists. Fills me with joy to realize that the old powers still cling to life."

"Uhhh… okay?"

"Never mind, I was rambling. Now, since this is your first check up in, what was it, six years? We'll need to be rather intensive."

Ranma grumbled and pulled his shirt off, good-naturedly offering his arm to the pressure cuff that Dr. Tofu fastened around it. Almost thirty minutes later, after a few more tests, an eye exam, weighing, a cocktail of vaccinations and a blood test (Tofu commented on how quiet he was, to which Ranma laughed and responded that a few needles had nothing on being alive by cats. Tofu was unsure how to respond to that), Tofu handed Ranma his shirt again.

"By all accounts, you are an extremely health individual. Physically fit, good blood pressure, no tumors or unusual physical features. About the only thing is your family inclination to astigmatist, but you seem to be safe from that. Congratulations, Ranma."

Ranma grunted and sat back down on the examination table. "I know I'm healthy, doc," he complained, "that's not what I'm here for. I want you to look at my girl body and tell me what's up with the horns." He picked up the flask of cold water and dumped it on his head. There was another small flash of whiteness, and in his place was a short, buxom girl with horns protruding from her head. She tapped one thoughtfully and looked at the family doctor expectantly. "Well? Whaddya have to say bout _these_?"

Dr. Tofu sighed. "Well, I suppose I'll have to take another blood test to see if the problem is genetically related to your female form, and then we're going to do some imaging on your head to see what they are. If it's any help, we'll have that part of the mess sorted out in less than an hour. Your eyes, however, I really couldn't say. I'm not an ophthalmologist."

"Can we get this show on the road?"

There was another needle, and Dr. Tofu decided that Ranma coped better with exhaustion and blood loss than any patient he'd ever had. The young martial artist was lead upstairs to a pair of adjacent small rooms, where Dr. Tofu kept a communal x-ray machine for several of his colleagues in the Nerima area. He escorted the girl to a closet, where he fitted her with a lead shirt and a device that looked suspiciously like a horse's bit. She complained some more, her heart not really in the complaining like it usually was, and Dr. Tofu ushered her into the room and instructed her to sit still. A few boring minutes passed, and the door to the room opened again.

"Why don't you go downstairs, Ranma? I'll be a while," he suggested, and Ranma eagerly shucked the lead coat and vanished downstairs. Dr. Tofu watched her depart, then went to the machine's interface and loaded the x-rays onto a flash drive. He pulled the memory device out and switched over to a laptop that was humming in standby on a table. With a few clicks, the results were displayed on the screen, and Tofu's mouth fell open in shock. He stared at the results for some time, then began typing rapidly, furiously hammering out a brief message and e-mailing the x-rays to every colleague on his contact list.

That done, he ran back to the blood test and finished as fast as he could, feverishly sifting out the barest strains of DNA from the red liquid and exposing it to every biochemical he had on hand. After nearly an hour of poking and prodding the genetic structure of Ranma's female body, Ono came to the inescapable conclusion that Ranma Saotome was not human. Well, at least half the time. He supposed that if magic was real, then mutants and aliens might be too, but it was still surprising to see that he was actually dealing with something _far_ outside his admittedly broad specifications. The young doctor slumped in his chair, running his hand through his hair as he debated how to explain the conundrum to his newest patient.

XXX

Ranma looked up from her magazine when the doctor came back. Tofu looked decidedly more haggard than before, and he gestured to all three of them. "You have to see this," he said, and the bewildered trio followed him into his office. He approached a white, wall mounted screen and flicked it on to reveal a larger-than-life copy of an x-ray of Ranma's skull. It looked fairly normal, save that the horns on her head appeared on screen as well. All three of them looked at it with vacant expressions.

"What are showing us, doctor?" Akane asked. Her father agreed. "Forgive our ignorance, but you may have to explain the meaning of this."

"That's understandable," Tofu said, "I didn't quite get it the first time I saw it either, although that was more out of disbelief. You see these bony protrusions here and here?" Ranma rolled her eyes. "Yeah, horns. I get it, they're attached to my freakin' head." Tofu shook his head and pointed to the base of one of the horns. "See how it attaches to your head?"

"Your cranium rolls up by the base of the horns seamlessly, like you were born with these. You weren't, obviously, but whoever drowned in the spring probably was. Now, this suggests to me that not only are these horns part of your genetic structure, they also carry several as-yet unidentified glands or membranes, maybe extensions of the frontal cortex, but definitely functional!"

Akane gave him a blank stare. "I only got about half of that," she said blandly. Ranma screwed her face up in concentration, then relaxed comically. "All Greek to me," she admitted. Soun sighed.

"Simply put, part of your brain resides in those horns, sizeable portions if we believe the images here. I can't imagine what operating on them would do to you, but there's every chance that the person whose body you're wearing managed to outsource something important to the extra space. I'm sorry, but you're stuck with those until we can get a more comprehensive test done."

Ranma nodded and put on her headband. "Just great. Thanks for everything, doc." She got up and walked out into the rain, Soun and Ono staring after her stupidly. With an anguished cry, Akane jumped to her feet and sprinted out of the clinic after her fiancée. Soun tore his gaze away from the door. "Thank you for your help in this matter, Dr. Ono. I would appreciate if you could keep this a private affair, as I doubt that Ranma needs more stress in her life right now."

Then he left as well, and only then did Tofu start to wonder what he had stumbled on.

XXX

Ranma ran blindly through the rain, Nerima as empty as ever. The sound of heavy rainfall disguised the sound of blood pounding through her ears as she tried to outrace her own feelings about the whole mess. Less than six months ago, he knew where he was going. He was the best damn martial artist anyone had ever seen, and all of his teachers but his father had said so. Genma refused to praise Ranma's progress in all but passing and boasts, but Ranma had figured it was only a matter of time until he could beat his father.

Then there was Jusenkyo. For the thousandth time, Ranma wondered what the hell had possessed his pops to take them there. There was no way that they just stumbled on the place, 'cause Genma had deliberately planned their course into the Bayankala mountains specifically for the 'magical' training one could obtain at Jusenkyo. Ranma reflected that he was at least partially at fault for the disaster. After all, there had been a man shouting warnings to them during the entire sparring session. It was only after a panda had roared its way out of the spring his pops had fallen in that Ranma felt the vague beginnings of nervousness light up in his pores.

Now, he had horns! His cursed form was the weirdest mutant, fucked up freak of nature he'd ever seen! Red hair, red eyes, every time she saw herself in the mirror she felt a wave of disgust and loathing ripple through her. After almost two weeks of trekking through Tibetan wilderness without so much as a hint of a hope of starting a campfire, Ranma was nearing a despondency that rivaled Ryoga's at its peak.

To top it off, he was a girl now! At first, it was easy to overlook the minor difference in gender (especially as it was rather hard to notice if he wasn't paying attention, and it wasn't like her pops had drawn attention to it). But almost a month after first getting cursed, Ranma had woken up irritable and bleeding like crazy into her boxer shorts. That was the first time she had kicked Genma off of a cliff, but it wasn't the last. Time wore on, and at the first sign of civilization after the Amazon village Ranma had casually marched into town… and was immediately cornered by three guys and a girl just older than her and heckled about her appearance. Ranma had tolerated it for all of twenty seconds before breaking the guy's arms and threatening to do so to the girl as well.

That worked fine once, but pretty soon almost everyone she passed was doing everything from giving her strange looks to crossing the road away from her, to throwing random things at her. When somebody picked up an unfortunate cat and prepared to launch it at the ailurophobic girl, Ranma had bolted into the nearest store and laid down enough money for a decent sports headband. Feeling marginally more secure, and with Genma nowhere in sight, Ranma sat down at an open-air café and ordered lunch. When a chance breeze pushed the headband off of her face, the entire café cleared _fast_, people screaming in terror and literally climbing over fences and each other to put as much distance between themselves and that _thing_ as they could.

She went hungry that day, and nearly every day afterwards that Ranma couldn't get her hands on hot water for. Inevitably, somebody would run over a puddle next to her or spill a drink, something small but hardly coincidental, and then everybody would clear off like she had the plague. For some reason that saddened her more than it did puzzle, Ryoga, of all people, was one of the people who ran away… three times.

She rounded a corner, breathing heavily, and ran smack into a wall. Ranma fell away, gasping and sputtering as she massaged her forehead and the tips of her horns, swearing in fragmented Chinese. In a fit of anger she kicked the wall at full strength, the power of her sideblade ripping through the bricks and putting a fist-sized hole in the wall. If anybody was inside, they didn't comment. Ranma growled and cocked her fist back, ready to flatten the entire building, but Akane stopped her. The blue-haired girl put one hand on Ranma's shoulder and squeezed.

"It's okay," she promised. "Nothing's going to happen, just 'cause you can't get rid of your horns. You only have them half the time anyways, and it isn't like anything's changed now that you know they're important for your girl side. No matter what happens, I'll always stay your friend. Nothing could make me hate you, not even weird bone thingies."

"Do you promise?" Ranma asked seriously, turning around. "I don't want you sayin' that, then turn around the minute I grow a tail or somethin'."

"I promise," Akane said firmly. "Let's go home and get you some hot water, alright? You have school tomorrow, we should figure out how to get you there without getting you wet."

Ranma breathed deeply to calm herself, then nodded. She had only had one friend at a time for most of her life, and right now one was good enough.

XXX

Dr. Tofu slept fitfully that night, tossing and turning in his bed as he ran over what had happened that day. He always fancied himself a doctor first and a martial artist second, his duty to protect the innocent coming before his honour and personal life, but there were definitely some people out there who weren't going to be as lenient with Ranma if they found him. The worst case scenario was if the law somehow didn't protect him because of his questionably human status, but even some serious negative attention could spiral out of proportion.

People always feared what they couldn't understand, and something about the young boy's perpetual sadness told Dr. Tofu that he'd learned that lesson from his curse already. Now he'd gone and publicized it all, and it was anyone's guess how long he had before some vigilante or 'concerned citizen' attacked Ranma in the middle of the street. It was also unlikely that the police or government was going to step in, which was unfortunate.

He abruptly realized that he wasn't going to get any sleep that night and got out of bed, flicking on the lights and putting on a robe and his glasses. Sighing sleepily the chiropractor walked into his modest kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. He was still running the strange events of the day through his mind when a powerful spotlight switched on through his front window. His heart stopping in sheer terror, Tofu looked out the window at the powerful light, not even resisting as men in Special Forces uniforms held him down and a tall man with dark hair and glasses reflecting pure white slammed a dirty rag over his mouth. He struggled briefly, but even with his martial arts skill Tofu Ono was unconscious in scant seconds.


	4. Act I, Scene III

Ranma cracked one eye open, and the first thing she saw was the carefully focused expression of Nabiki Tendo, armed with a camera. As she watched, horrified, Nabiki took a picture of her, the light of the flash bulb illuminating her mostly-naked body. Only a pair of boxer shorts protected her modesty from the camera's cold lens, and a brief mental check revealed that her horns were uncovered. She stayed frozen in shock for another photograph, but Nabiki adjusting her stance over her prone body awoke a hidden well of fury. Ranma rose up and smashed a forearm into Nabiki's chest, knocking her off of the bed.

"What the hell are you doing?" she roared, stunning Nabiki into unreaction even as her camera cracked on the floor, spilling the film roll everywhere. "What is wrong with you? Taking pictures of me, naked in the middle of the night?" Ranma hopped to a crouch, then jumped off of her bed. "This is child pornography, you moron! And what about my horns? What the hell do you think is gonna happen if you spread pictures of me, naked and with horns all over the place?"

"Now hold up a sec, Ranma," Nabiki said peaceably. "There's a reason I'm doing this, and I suppose you deserve to know."

"You were gonna tell me in the mornin'?"

"Of course, Ranma. You see, I run a small betting pool at Furinkan High, the place you'll be going to school tomorrow, and I'm not sure what sort of odds to put on you as a fighter."

"And to do that you took pictures of me naked?"

"No, that was a prelude to me asking you to fight someone in practice so I can guess if you'll beat Kuno."

"… huh?"

"Basically, do a kata or something before we leave for school, and I'll cut you some of the profit."

Ranma groaned sleepily. "Well. Money good. School bad."

"Now now, the least you could do if you _have_ to go to school is help me make some money off of the suckers there."

"Fine, I'll do it. How good is Kuno, anyway?"

Nabiki grinned. "Oh, you don't need to worry about him. I'm just setting up a pool on how long he'll last before you knock his lights out."

"Tha's great 'n all, but it's, like, two in th' morning. Can I go back to bed?"

"Sure thing, Ranma-baby. See you at breakfast."

With that, Ranma climbed back into bed and fell asleep immediately, one leg falling off of the mattress and the other getting tangled in the blankets. Genma snored like a rocket taking off, and Nabiki grinned like a Cheshire cat. _'Sucker!'_ she thought, and picked up the camera.

XXX

Ranma was eating her cereal when Nabiki stumbled downstairs, looking rather like a disgruntled zombie. She grunted at her unintelligibly and held out one hand to Kasumi, who handed her a plaster mug full of coffee. The mercenary Tendo drank deeply, and only then did the beginnings of life return to her vacant face. "Good stuff, Kasumi, thanks," she mumbled.

"Do you want me to practice yet?" Ranma asked, wolfing down the remains of her breakfast and defending it from her father at the same time. Nabiki shook her head sleepily. "Nah, it's good. You can wipe the floor with Kuno anyways."

"Son, I've been thinking," Genma said. Ranma raised an eyebrow, inviting him to continue. "I want you to go to school as a girl."

Ranma's fist slammed into Genma's jaw with a resounding crack, and Soun winced. "Please don't hit your father until after breakfast," he said firmly. Genma growled and rubbed his face, but didn't retaliate. "Now son, I want to explain myself to you first."

"Better make this good, old man," Ranma threatened.

"It will be raining all this week," Genma said slowly, like he was speaking to a moron. "I think that if you go as a girl, you won't have to tell everybody about your curse, which you _know_ would come up if you went as a boy. Even if you did, you'll have to run through the rain to get there and back, not to mention gym class."

"It'll make it easier on you," Soun chimed in. "Just wear a headband to hide your horns, and nobody will be the wiser!"

"You're both serious, aren't you?" Ranma realized with dawning horror. "Pops, you can't be serious! You keep telling me that girls are weak, and we need to protect them, and now you want me to go to school as one? You're outta your flippin' mind, is what you are!"

"Now son, if you must go to school, you won't be tarnishing the family name as a male," Genma admonished.

"Heh, that's more like it," Ranma snorted. "Whatever, I'll do it. Not like anybody's gonna wanna take my headband off at school." Nabiki winced.

Akane came running down the stairs, dressed in her Furinkan High uniform shirt and skirt, ate the piece of toast that Kasumi offered to her in one bite, and grabbed Ranma's arm in a vice grip. "Come on, we gotta go! We're going to be late, you slowpoke!" Ranma didn't have time to protest as the daily freight train dragged her out of her chair and into the storm.

Nabiki sipped her coffee and chuckled. "Idiots. There's still thirty minutes until we even need to leave."

"That was brilliant, Saotome!" Soun crowed. "If Ranma is forced to be a girl in high school, his only romantic outlet will be the girl who knows his secret!"

Genma gave his best friend an odd look. "And… help her deal with social problems?" he asked belatedly. Soun deflated somewhat. "Yes, that too."

"You're both horrible parents, and you need to feel ashamed of yourselves," Nabiki deadpanned. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get to school early. I have some pictures to sell."

"Nabiki, you know father and I disapprove of you selling pictures of your sister to those boys at Furinkan," Kasumi said. She made _boys_ sound like a curse word. Nabiki's eyebrows quirked, yen signs dancing behind her eyes. "Don't worry, Kasumi, I won't sell pictures of Akane today." She ran out the door before any of the three deduced her logical slip-up.

XXX

Ranma adjusted her headband outside the gates to the schoolyard, Akane giving her best exasperated look to the unwitting diclonius. "It's fine, I can't even see a thing," she insisted, which hardly placated Ranma. "I just don't want anybody to notice," she said for the umpteenth time. "I only get one first impression, I don't wanna mess it up like I did with you guys." Akane flinched.

"I have to get going, there's something I need to do before school," Akane said, walking into the yard. "You still have five minutes or so… I HATE BOYS!"

Ranma watched, astounded, as Akane unslung her shoulder bag, withdrew a mallet, and proceeded to bludgeon her way through the entire male population of Furinkan High. She stepped forward, headband secure but forgotten, and waded through the unconscious sea of bodies, all of whom were destined to the very fate Akane abhorred: lateness. Ranma's subconscious mind was already cataloging the street fighting moves she used and separating them from the crowd-fighting techniques of the Tendo School of Anything Goes. According to Genma, the Tendo division focused more on dealing indiscriminate damage across the board, rather than the more focused and mobile Saotome branch.

"Halt, fierce Tigress!" a voice rang out. Akane dropkicked a pale boy with thick cokebottle glasses and a massive railroad spike, and turned to the source of the offending voice. She was practically steaming with rage. "You have indeed proven your worth in the greatest of Arts, my beloved Akane Tendo," Tatewaki Kuno intoned. "But it is time for you to meet your fate at the end of my bokken, for we are destined to be lovers! Have at thee!"

He charged at Akane, wooden training sword held high, and Akane raised her dual weapons to block the swipe. Kuno, however, was far more talented and dangerous than the rest of the rabble Akane had faced, and Ranma immediately recognized that Akane could very easily lose. She secured her new bag across her back and charged, heedless of the danger to herself, to intercept Kuno's next attack.

Akane readied to parry a sideways thrust, when she found herself almost _teleported_ backwards a good five meters, allowing Ranma to smash a forearm into Kuno's throat. The kendoist didn't see the attack coming, nor did he expect the level of viciousness that he encountered. Breath driven away and coming back in ragged gasps, Kuno dropped his weapon outright and scrambled away, breathing heavily. At the behest of Ranma's foot, he fell to his knees in blind pain.

"Come on, let's go inside," Ranma said dully, taking Akane gently by the wrist and pulling her into the school just as the bell rang.

"What was that?" asked Akane. "I do this every morning, there's no need to get involved with my life more than you already are. I mean, it's nice that you dealt with Kuno for me," she hurried to appease her newfound friend, "but tomorrow, I'd like to have my go at him again."

"What was their problem?" Ranma asked, confused in a distracted sort of way. Her horns were pounding now, like a headache outside of her head. She massaged the tips of the external appendages, marveling at the sensation. It was stranger than being a girl in many respects, because girls were at least _similar_ to guys in most ways. The main differences were the (Ranma blushed) breasts and, err… _nether_ regions. The former was annoying, but hardly a deal breaker, and the later weren't something she paid attention to anyways. She imagined it was similar to being a eunuch, but without all the mutilation and awkwardness with going to the bathroom.

Check that, going to the bathroom was awkward in the extreme, as Ranma discovered some weeks ago, inadvertently figuring out two seconds too late that girl's couldn't piss standing up for a reason. Plus, it drew attention to things she preferred not to think about.

"Ranma?" It was their first period teacher, or so Ranma assumed, because she had no idea what happened in the brief period during her musings. She suspected that Akane had simply dragged her to class. "Yes, teacher?" she answered, face burning in shame. Belatedly, she pulled her hand away from her headband.

"Now that we have everyone's attention," the teacher continued, in the teacherly fashion that technically spoke to everyone, but you really knew was directed at you, "Class, this is Ranma Saotome. She recently came back from an extended trip to China, and is now staying with the Tendo family. Do you want to introduce yourself?"

"Nah," Ranma dismissed him.

"Very well. In the future, you will sit next to Akane, as you are already acquainted with her. But for now, as you are both late, go stand in the hall! Akane, please show our new student where the buckets are."

XXX

"That was strange," Ranma said. "It was like…"

"Idiot!" Akane hissed, letting go of her beckets to swat Ranma's hand away from her temple. "Stop _doing_ that, or someone will see!"

"What? Afraid somebody's gonna' see you with the freak?" she commented blithely. "Aargh, it hurts," she moaned, resuming trying to rub her pain away.

"We were late!" Akane went on, skating over her previous _faux pas_. "You ruined my perfect record!"

"I'da' thought your crazy friend would'a done that already," Ranma said.

"He's _not_ my friend. That bastard set the whole school on me a few months ago. He asked me to go out, I told him to piss off, and the next day he got up during a school assembly and told everyone that to date me, they'd have to beat me in a fight."

"That doesn't sound too bad," Ranma rationalized, shifting restlessly in place.

"Well, apparently all the guys here are horny idiots, because the next day _that_ got turned into 'you can have sex with Akane if you beat her up!'"

"Be quiet out there Ms. Tendo!" the teacher hollered, and Akane subsided into fuming silence. Ranma looked horrified, to which Akane shrugged. _'What can you expect? Men are pigs.'_

"Look, here comes the Tornado of Justice," Akane said mockingly, and Ranma turned to see Tatewaki Kuno striding down the hall, his mud-slick bokken drawn and pointed at Ranma.

"Nay, that moniker has passed with my fading passion for the lovely Yuka," Tatewaki Kuno shouted, unnecessarily loudly. Yuka, who was just inside earshot, sneezed. "I have forged a new name for my new desire, one to symbolize my great power and impressive presence. For now I am Tatewaki Kuno, the Blue Thunder! Undefeated champion of Furinkan High!"

"What do you call what just happened?" Ranma muttered, but nobody heard or listened.

"Wait, what about me?" Akane asked, in a mix of hope and disbelief.

"My quest for the invincible tigress shall never fade!" Kuno defied, both social convention and the belief of everybody listening. Which was quite a few people, as students and teachers were crowding at the doors to the hallway to eavesdrop.

"My newest conquest shall be thee, my delightful nymph of dreadful swiftness! Thy fiery spirit matches the hue of your flowing locks, which-"

"Wait, me?" Ranma interjected. "That- that's not cool, bro. That's just- no. Really? No."

"Come with me, and I shall show thee wonders that ordinary life cannot bestow, treasures withheld from the common wallflower that you have surpassed. In my eyes, such beauty and untamable strength is worth of any favour, including my hand in courtship!" The kendoist struck a pose, his bokken held high and kendogi flapping in a draft. A flash of lighting punctuated his statement, followed swiftly by a rattling _boom_ of thunder.

"Is… he isn't serious, is he?" asked Ranma.

"'Fraid so, little brother," Nabiki called out from somewhere in the crowd.

"Ah, so you are kin to my fierce tigress?" Kuno mused. "Such would explain thy adept movement in the Art."

"Fiancé, actually," Ranma corrected automatically, her horns now positively burning under the blue fabric concealing them from the hungry eyes of the school. The hallway erupted in confusion and exclamation, most notably Akane's "Ranma, you IDIOT!" and Kuno's "WHAT? THIS CANNOT BE! THE FIERCE TIGRESS CANNOT BE OF SUCH QUESTIONABLE TASTE IN CARNAL PLEASURE!"

"Told you so," Hiroshi said, prompting Hikaru to punch him in the arm, which was so feeble that Hiroshi ignored it completely.

"My graceful nymph!" Kuno called in a parody of desperation, charging the distance between himself and 'his graceful nymph.' Time slowed to a crawl, and several things happened in quick succession. Akane, with presence of mind and timely foresight, ducked out of the way of the onslaught, relieving Ranma of the burden of her buckets. With her hands freed, Ranma easily parried the first attack down, the wood of the bokken sliding over her shirt and down the outside of her thigh. Finally, Kuno's guard hand jerked to it's natural defensive location… on top of Ranma's breast.

Ranma's expression morphed from studiously blank to blackly enraged. Unseen by her, Akane scrambled backwards. The scorching, roiling inferno burning in Ranma's horns reached a crescendo, and with an audible **bang**, burst free of its constraints.

* * *

It was dark.

Nobody.

Dark, nobody, echo.

Ranma, kneeling in the lake

Naked

Looks up at

Ice

Rage

Pain

Power

_Pink_

And the Other smiles

"You have it

Inside of you

Reach out

Take

Use

Revenge

Bloodlust, vengeance, death, inferno

Cold

Like Ice"

She blinks

And Ranma is gone

There

Is

Only

**Ranko**

* * *

Ranko's flowing hair fell over her eyes, shrouding her face in darkness. Her eyes, red and raw, now shone with feverish delight. A sudden burst of killing intent exploded from her, scouring Nerima with a shockwave of twisted emotion, and martial artists in the fighter-bloated district felt an uncontrollable desire to flee for their lives.

"Ranma?" Akane asked hesitantly, but Ranko ignored her. Kuno froze, stuck like a deer caught in the headlights of a truck, staring certain doom in the face with the suicidal bravery that only the incredibly lucky or incredibly stupid seem to possess. Ranko bent her knees slightly, bracing herself for what she knew was to come, and four lines of shimmering light shot through the darkness of her mind with unholy speed, racing each other to the surface. They jostled each other with friendly rivalry, twisting through the starless night of subconscious, channeled through the mysterious biological mechanisms of the infamous horns.

Four invisible arms burst from Ranko's back, emerging at the points of a square in her upper back. They passed harmlessly through her skin and clothes, waving lazily at Ranko's beck and call. She smiled gruesomely, the expression totally off on Ranma's naïve face, and it was the unnerving power of the smile that jolted Tatewaki Kuno to action. He backed away, tripping over his feet and stuttering in fear, putting a meter between himself and the _thing_ he'd once called his love before turning to run.

Ranko watched Tatewaki with cold amusement, allowing the boy his hope. Just before he reached the edge of her reach, the diclonius lanced forward with a transparent appendage, gripping Kuno by the ankle and hoisting him into the air by his leg. The padded kilt of his uniform fell, pooling around his shoulders and affording the assembled people a personal glimpse of his pink-and-red boxers, but nobody took the opportunity. Most were occupied with staring at Ranko in abject terror, Akane especially.

The youngest Tendo dropped her bucket and edged away slowly, but the sixth sense Ranko inherited from her body caught the movement. A second arm wrapped itself around her waist like an anaconda, squeezing her tightly and lifting her until she was standing merely on the tips of her toes. Akane tried to scream, but the hand on the end of the arm choked her silent. No matter, Tatewaki screamed at just the right pitch and volume to make up for the both of them.

"Interesting," Ranko exhumed in a sibilant whisper, the syllables dropping off her tongue with a serpentine inflection. Nobody dared to move a muscled, save Akane's struggling and Kuno's futile exercise in moving his diaphragm. "I expected more of a _challenge_ from such fine specimens of humanity." She chuckled darkly. "Silly me."

"What manner of demon art thou!" Kuno bellowed, slashing wildly with his training sword, which looked rather comical from his upside-down vantage. "Release me this instant!"

"No. Sadly, I have plans for you." Ranko sighed in mock disappointment. "Your whore may go, if you beg for her life." Akane looked outraged, but was fast succumbing to oxygen deprivation. "Very well, vile thing… I beg of thee, spare my beloved Akane Tendo from thine undeserved wrath!" Kuno said, disgusted with himself.

"No, that's not good enough," Ranko said, clearly enjoying herself. "I think you need to pay for it. What do you say, my friend? Care to make a deal?"

"Anything! Anything at all!" Kuno cried desperately.

"Very well," Ranko supplied, and released Akane. She fell to her knees and crumpled up, gasping down air. "You've moved me, you pitiful excuse for a samurai. What shall I take? What is… _anything_?"

"I… um…" Kuno scrambled for a reply. Ranko laughed, low and mocking. "You didn't care! But you do now, right?" She ran an invisible hand over Kuno's exposed legs, and he shivered. "I could pop these off, here and now. Wouldn't even hurt… at first. Would that be worth her life? Crippled, broken, robbed of your…"

She stopped, a thought occurring to the superpowered sociopath. "What about your manhood?" she asked rhetorically. "To promise your life is one thing, but when it comes to _that_, braver men than you have folded. Well? WHAT ABOUT YOUR PRIDE? YOUR GREATEST POSESSION? WHAT IS YOUR LIFE WORTH THEN?" Ranko was screaming, spittle flying and eyes wide with barely controlled hatred. Kuno was paralyzed by fear, and a stiff odor told the diclonius that he'd wet himself. She smiled craftily and ran a vector closer to the source of her taunts. Kuno found enough of his voice to whimper, but Ranko paid her no mind.

"Amputation," she hissed, and wound back for a swing with the flat of her blade…

Akane came running down the hall, a pail in one hand and a mallet in the other. She rounded on Ranko, panting with exertion, and smashed the mallet into her back as hard as she could. A spray of blood shot from Ranko, but before she had time to process what had happened, Akane splashed her with the boiling water. The scalding temperature dissolved the vectors and returned Ranma to his birth gender. Capitalizing on his confusion, Akane grabbed Ranma by the collar and continued running down the hallway, so fast that the whole thing took place in the blink of an eye. To those watching, Ranko simply vanished, allowing Kuno to fall on his head.

Once they were out of sight, Akane smashed Ranma flat against the wall and hit him in the head with her mallet.

"What?" he demanded. She hit him again, and this time he sank into unconsciousness.

**It will make sense. I promise.**


End file.
